The town centre is quiet. More shops are closed than open. The ones that remain look tired. You can walk from the castle to the river and barely pass another person on the pavement. The tourist coaches still come, but they drop people at the castle gates and pick them up two hours later. Nobody wanders.
The new flats near the station are almost finished. They sit empty. The letting boards have been up for months. Rents are too high for local wages and the commute to London is too long for most people to bother. The estate agents blame the council. The council blames the market. Nobody blames the fact that there is nothing to do here after 6pm.
The river path is busier. Runners and dog walkers. That is the real Windsor now. A place people pass through. A place to exercise near, not a place to live in. The cafes on the high street survive on weekend trade. Weekdays they are half empty.
The big change is the new cinema. It opened six months ago and it is doing well. That is the only new thing. Everything else is a version of something that was here before. The same restaurants. The same shops. The same feeling that the town peaked twenty years ago and nobody told the council.
Paul